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Ask HN: I will pay you $2000 and code the MVP for your side-project
211 points by esquire_900 on March 31, 2019 | hide | past | favorite | 122 comments
Premise 1: Investors/Incubators over-estimate their ability to pick good ideas/startups.

Premise 2: Software by a lone developer is not pragmatically different from software by a big A-team. It’s the market fit and marketing / sales that makes or breaks the project.

Premise 3: Most freelancers will not build and/or follow-through with their ideas, because they are not sure it will sell.

Premise 4: HackerNews has a decent number of people who know how the world works, and how a little glue would make it better.

Based on these premises I present The Proposition 2.0 (following version 1.0 [1]):

I’ll pay you $500 for your “real-life problem that needs a software fix” idea and market validation / research. I will build the MVP and give you another $1500 to bring us our first paying customer(s). We split the resulting product 80-20 as co-founders.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5037694 [2] https://www.simonnouwens.com/hn




This doesn't make much sense. A 20% royalty is an absurdly high price to pay for an idea, for which you'd do all the execution; meanwhile, if you expect them to do substantial work as a "co-founder", 20% is absurdly too low.


The idea is probably to get a lot of pitches and then select the idea, no matter what it is, from whichever applicant has the most wealthy accredited investors as family.


If an idea plus zero additional work is worth less 20%, but an idea plus substantial additional work is worth more than 20%, isn't there an amount of work that makes the agreement worth it? I guess you have some sort of intuition that there's no reasonable way to agree to anything in between for incentive reasons or something, but that's not clear to me at all. Can you explain?


The biggest issue is you have information asymmetry between the domain expert and the developer. Because developers can't tell the difference between great ideas and bad ones they'll pay the same price on the market. If all ideas sell for the same amount and you're a domain expert than it makes sense to keep your best ideas and sell your worst ones. This drives down the average quality of an idea as well as price which means less domain experts are willing to sell at market price which drives down quality, etc... Very similarly to an insurance death spiral. A similar process also drives down the average quality of the developer working on the work.


That adverse-selection argument applies to all selling of ideas. It doesn't address my question.


Transaction costs are not 0. So even if it seems like that would be a nice and stable equilibrium, getting there might be simply too expensive.


Sure, that's possible. But what's the actual argument?


First of all, it's the former. That is, it's an absurdly high price to pay for an idea and first customers given what is standard in the market.

Second of all, it doesn't matter. The biggest hurdle to being successful is getting started. "Getting started" necessarily entails finding an idea you're motivated to work on and a vision to achieve your goals. This guy has found one way to get started. If losing 20% of the upside is what it takes to get started, it's not a big deal.

Just remember you can't keep making decisions that give away 20% of your upside over and over, because you'll end up with nothing (barring extenuating circumstances).


The intention is to pay for an idea, validation and first customers (by being an idea from someone that lives/works with the current problem).


I don't think anybody misunderstands your intention. The disagreement is the effectiveness of your proposition.

The problem is that your 80/20 deal causes an adverse selection that attracts the lower-quality non-coders that you don't want.

If non-technical non-programmers like Evan Spiegel (Snapchat), Brian Chesky (AirBNB), and Steve Jobs (Apple) can hustle to find that 1st angel investor, or 1st VC funding, or 1st paying customer, that means they also have the street smarts to find an alternative solution to your very expensive 80/20 deal.

Even after the biz-idea guys hustle to get that 1st customer, they have to continue hustling to get the 2nd, 3rd, and so on customers to grow a viable business -- unless your thesis is that a new startup with 1 customer is enough to "flip" it to an acquirer like Google/Facebook/Microsoft.


I think the quality of the average HN user is pretty high, but obviously this might attract low-quality proposals. Honestly every offer to code someone's idea will (I've been there, and fallen for it more then once), take what "nithin001" posted as example.

This isn't the way to find the next Steve Jobs indeed, and that's not what I'm searching for. I'm looking for that consultant that has seen 4 clients wasting 8 hours a week on the same inefficiency. Someone who will get $2k for an idea and a number of phone calls, and a large kickback for sales (s)he makes in his/her direct network. This isn't the way to kickstart a $1bn company :)


>This isn't the way to find the next Steve Jobs indeed, and that's not what I'm searching for. [...] This isn't the way to kickstart a $1bn company

I get your clarification now. I think some including me were thrown off by your "Premise 1: Investors/Incubators over-estimate their ability to pick good ideas/startups."

In your business opportunities of "consultants who notice a workflow inefficiency but would rather pay 80% to someone else to do the programming work for a new product", that landscape doesn't have "overestimated abilities" of investors. Instead, they don't even look there at all. They need to put more than $2000 to work on a single deal to make their due diligence time worthwhile. For their fund sizes, they're scouting the arena of potential huge $1b businesses. No non-techie founders of that type of business that had any street smarts at all would ever give up 80% equity of a company in exchange for an MVP. By design of your 80% cut, it would only attract desperate losers. That was the "adverse selection" I was talking about.

However, now that I've seen your other replies, your deal feels more like paying a "finder's fee" to the consultant for his/her business idea rather than attracting a cofounder that will share the workload of doing multiple years of hard work with you. Nothing wrong with this but I misunderstood earlier what you were trying to accomplish. In this case, maybe tptacek is right and your 80% is too low and you're underpaying yourself.


He still has the opportunity to turn down all but the greatest ones (or all of them) so I think that this is a pretty decent way of approaching it.


mvps are easy. there are thousands of grads who will build your mvp in a weekend hackathon for free. its the market research/validation that is hard. as the guy with the idea, i'm supposed to do that part and pay 80% to the guy who did the mvp?? or is the op saying they do the marketing and provide first customer?? the wording is terribly ambiguous.


Consider instead that the person is an investor. But instead of investing money, they invest not only the initial idea, but also help solve some problems along the way. So, very similar to investors, but instead of money, the investors also provide the idea. 20% sounds reasonable for that.


Actually it's a bit like "spec work". https://www.lifewire.com/what-is-spec-work-1697435. If you get 100 ideas per investment, then the average idea gets .02% royalty.

The chosen ideas will be idea + market research / inside info as to why it is a good idea. That has some value over a one line "Uber for X".


I love building. I’d do an MVP for much less equity if I’d actually get it. But I won’t. One of my MVPs turned into a $500M acquisition. Got $0.

This is normal in Silicon Valley. So many unicorns hiding skeletons of enthusiastic side-project coders.

I’d say don’t do it, but... to be honest, I never could have hyped my own prototype the way they did. I didn’t have the rich kid VC connections that they did. And I needed my day job. So really I lost nothing. At least I got the story.


Sorry to hear about your experience. That's one of the main things that puts me off about the current startup/VC relationship.

I am not a Silicon Valley kid though, don't want to be, and this isn't going to be a unicorn.


Weird that someone there doesnt throw u a $100K acquisition bonus just for good karma...

If u think u would enjoy gradually building a B2C product drop me a line. Maybe i can hook on u on a better story...

B2C, paid product, well differentiated, plenty of demand.

sdjhsdfjkhkjsdf@maildrop.cc (disposable, 24hrs, messages may be read by others)


Are you able to mention the company, either publicly or privately?


Whatever happened was probably entirely legal and probably ethical as well.

You can be a cofounder, and have ownership even if there is a lack of contracts and paperwork, and that likely would have come up during that $500M acquisition. I can't find it, but there was a Ycombinator - backed startup whose sale was blocked by a founder who went AWOL early.

If he was an employee, or did otherwise hand over / accept compensation for his work, well, that's just business as usual: employees generating wealth for owners.

The lesson is to have clarity of what you want out of a certain work, and then have some kind of contract, before you start working.


Well, I never have, but, life is short, and this was long ago, so... Skybox.


I have a similar story.I guess there are many of us


> At least I got the story.

Would you mind sharing?


Oh boy... Well, doesn't do me any good, so never before told, but I guess I only have so many stories to tell before I get hit by a bus, so... Briefly:

2007-2009 Satellite project at Stanford. Very modest capabilities. Prof had idea. Design and operating system by adjunct. Hardware by LMT volunteer (the real hero). I, also volunteer, wrote control software, did radiation testing at UCD LinAc. Bunch of students too. Then deployed to Afghanistan, heard nothing. Came back 3 years later, went to random meetup: person I've never seen presenting talk about founding company with brilliant undergrad who built a tiny satellite that could read license plates from space. Wait... what? Oh that guy. Hmmm... well, I wouldn't have done it, but hey, the pitch worked. $100M funding... wow. $500M acquisition by Google... eyes wide open. AFAIK, others not involved. Hope HW hero got something: quiet, humble, fast, obsessive, helpful, learned so much from him, but seems to have disappeared.


This seems like a doubly losing proposition. If you created my idea and I only get to keep 20%, I wouldn't assist you very much in maintaining the business. If I were to partner with someone, I would resent shelling out 20% to an absent partner. Ideas aren't worth a fifth, and a fifth isn't a suitable carrot/stick.


Thanks for your comment. I think 20% is a fair price for idea/validation/first sell and direct access to a customer space. If it's going to be a $100m company in 2 years then yes, 20% is going to hurt, but honestly I don't expect that.


Maybe not hurt if it was not dilutable, the initial 20% holder could be issued more shares to keep their percentage at 20%. By the time 3 or 4 rounds are raised the initial 80% owner might only retain 20% after dilution. So in the end you have to look at the cap table after future rounds, the fact that during a period of history (probably before there is any real cash to distribute) the split was 80/20 won't matter.


But more importantly, if I build the product and get the first customer what do I need you for? 2k is chicken shit. Unless the idea is a throwaway, something I'm not passionate about, I'd just build it myself.


Suppose you have more seemingly good ideas then you could possibly build yourself.


Exactly! Gotta focus on one or the other. Either pay me for the idea, or I pay you to do the work.


How did the first[1] offer went?

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5037694


If he/she is back with the same pitch, it probably went well enough to try again.


Or maybe it didn’t go well enough, and that’s the reason for a second attempt. You can’t say either way which is what makes the question worth asking and a potential answer extremely interesting. Though an actual answer, not just a deference to speculation.


Probably a different person FYI. Usernames are different.


Very curious about this.


Premise 5: My expectation is that you don't have anything close to what I would expect -- especially for an 80% share -- so why should I waste my time with you?


What do you expect from me?


Sounds good. Though part of being a cofounder is more than MVP, is there any vesting provision? Also not 100% clear who gets the 80%


On the link from [2] it says:

> We split the resulting product 80-20 (me-you) as co-founders.

I found it confusing that there was no [2] in the body of the post, only the footnote list.


There is a lot to running a business beyond the first MVP and customer. Being a cofounder is as intense if not more intense than being married. I would almost flip it around so you take a 20% passive stake with an priority to a dividend or a royalty on revenue so that you aren’t expected to manage multiple companies as a “founder”.

I am assuming that you are trying to get multiple ideas off the ground.


Multiple ideas - maybe, totally depends on what comes up. Though it would change the intention of the deal, flipping around the deal wouldn't be something I'd say no to right away. It's a proposition after all, not a ridged set of rules we have to follow :)

Got anything in mind?


I have a list of 40 ideas that I don’t have time to build. Ideas are easy. MVPs seem easy in theory, iteration to find product market fit; that is hard. Execution and building a team after product market fit is harder. That’s where most the work is.

All of this is why a brand new founder seems like a novice when they are very secretive about an idea or want an NDA; ideas are easy. In reality, executing on an idea depends on domain expertise, which most developers, investors, random people you tell your don’t have, and know they don’t have. And most people know following through on an idea is a lot of work — they aren’t that interested in the hassle.

Paul Graham used to give ideas to founders for free.

I would suggest spending more time developing an analytical framework to identify problems. Don’t think in terms of “ideas”. Think I terms of a problem faced by an actual customer or user.

My favorite framework comes from Aaron Harris. He says you should find a customer that has their hair on fire because a prototype fire extinguisher would solve a very serious problem for them. They wont care how basic, ugly, broken, or unreliable your fire extinguisher is and won’t care what price youre asking; they want to put out the fire.


Maybe the OP is trying to find problems, ideas that fit his unique skills and expertise to execute, and wants a little bit of help to validate.


So you'll pay $500 for an idea you like, pay $1500 after first customer, and then pay a 20% royalty after that. Seems like a potentially good deal.

Can you elaborate a bit more about what type of projects you are looking for? Any specific markets?


Yep. Looking for something "side-project worthy"; something that can be build in a reasonable amount of time and generate an interesting revenue stream. I don't mind which market but am specifically looking for a niche, a piece of inside knowledge you have that we can exploit together :)


The idea is that for 20% you do all of the marketing/business side of things, as I understand it.


For 80%.


> pay $1500 after first customer

You(or friends) can become the customer if cost is < 1500.


I like how some people are complaining that he'll take 80%... for what amounts to just giving you an idea and the first client.

Usually we hear the opposite side on HN. "Why would VCs own so much if all they offer is money when we (programmers) do all the work".

I think people should take him up on it.


Giving up 80% for "an idea" is fine.

Giving up 80% for the first customer? That's a big ask.

Someone noteworthy said that 50% of building a business is going from 0 to 1 customer. The other half is going from 1 to many customers.

That being said, this person is assuming a lot of risk that the partner is flaky and doesn't follow through, that financing won't be available, etc etc.

In reality, I suspect they're probably building out a 4-6 week MVP, getting a couple of customers, then selling the business as a "turnkey startup" for ~$50k (of which they get 80%/$40k). Not a bad proposition.


Giving up 80% for the first customer? That's a big ask.

The customer only exists if the idea is turned into an actual product. Until then he's just a person who wishes his problem could be solved.


For a second I thought I was reading through my post history when this came up!


Thanks again for inspiring this in the first place :)


I'm a big fan of both efforts. Ideas are a dime a dozen (if that) and I like the unconventional and challenging approach that you both took. I'm rifling through my idea notepad to pitch my hat into the ring :)


Out of curiosity, what was the outcome of The HN Proposition 1.0?

Edit: http://www.simonnouwens.com/hn/index.php/2019/03/31/init-com... answers the question


"The idea gained some traction, and hmexx received over 250 emails, which were filtered down to 5 picks. Out of those 5, three were discontinued (1 after market research, 2 after failure to deliver MVP). The 2 ideas that were put online appear to be http://parametrek.com (an experimental product search) and http://www.textrep.com (an open-house notification system). Both projects as well as the experiment ended up floating somewhere on the software-graveyard, which is a shame, as the idea is great and the premises are (mostly) correct. Besides that the proposition generated a lot of community interest, which ended up being unused by the project." -- http://www.simonnouwens.com/hn/index.php/2019/03/31/init-com...


I point people to the flashlight search on paranetrek all the time. I had no clue about the backstory.

If you want a new flashlight check out http://flashlights.parametrek.com/


Everything he wrote about that was wrong.

I was never accepted into the original Proposition. I did not get any money or advice. But my elevator pitch was good enough to convince me to go through with it anyway. And I'm hardly "floating in the software graveyard."

But I am glad you enjoy my site ^_^


Rectified this on my website, and apologies to parametrek for getting it wrong (and suggesting the project failed). Only found some sparse information online, and failed to do my homework properly after that. It's a pity hmexx didn't share too much of the results, would have been an interesting piece of information.

Sorry parametrek, didn't intend to bash your work - you obviously did better in the side-project business then I did so far :)


Hi I really like the site, kudos.

Are you still open-sourcing the search tech? The github link on your site is broken. Cheers.


Shit I’ll pay you $10k and only keep 10%. Finding real life problems that (truly) require a (tenable) software fix are getting harder and harder to find.


Yep agreed; I think there is a good opportunity here for full stack devs that have the luxury of at least time to help people out and perhaps create a cool product and company based on software skills. Which is increasingly rare indeed.

I started several companies on this basis and because it has become harder I focused on networking, investor relations and business skills, so now I can offer angel, series A (and higher), business development and development skills in exchange for a %. I think teaming up with another full stack and then doing this would be the next logical step. If someone is interested, either with an idea or skills, contact me (see profile).


I will take it ;)

Are u a FE coder by any chance? Or a marketing/growth guy. I am in backend/algo so any mobile/browser-related dependency becomes a blocker for me. Sigh.

B2C, paid product, well differentiated, plenty of demand.

Drop me a line at sdjhsdfjkhkjsdf@maildrop.cc (disposable, 24hrs, messages may be read by others)


Full stack. I’ve forgotten more frameworks than most care to ever learn.


Hey. Sounds great. I didnt see any incoming messages, so maybe it was deleted.

Please re-send contact details to D-56dm11pzbsa@maildrop.cc (this is a secure alias. Other people will not be able to see messages. )


what's your contact info, I am experiencing problems in Amazon reselling space that we need solutions for, but no time to build. We might be able to work together, can you drop your contact in your profile.


Just to clarify who gets the bigger share of equity?


This is perfect idea. Here's usecase.

At our startup, our main cashflow is reselling on Amazon. The current business model we are using shares a lot of similarity with other Amazon sellers. There are a lot of workflows that are cookie cutter across other sellers/companies that can be automated/improved with custom tools.

There's demand for what we need (automation tools, api tools to request specific materials from Amazon), we will even pay and be the first customer ourselves.

If we can get equity for you to build this tool, this is a no brainer idea!

You can reach out to me in my profile, love to setup a call to discuss a bit more on this.


What do you resell on Amazon and what kind of automation tools are you looking for?

We run a startup that helps brands to automate their ecommerce and we are focusing on Amazon. The challenge here is that for automation/AI we need a sizeable data and it's hard to get revenue with bad forecasts.

We have been on this for 2 years and our forecasting is improving along with revenues. You can drop me an email if you would like to chat further.


Hi Ganesh, I couldn't find a direct email from your profile.

We resell name brands on Amazon, we work with brands to resell their products on Amazon. One of the most often request is MAP violator takedowns, we need a way to monitor brand's listings on Amazon to find people who violate MAP pricing.

Another request is sales opportunity. Like what listings could use improvement, and what listings can use more adspend. With Amazon, you can reverse engineer a lot of this stuff, it's presenting it to the brand in a seamless manner that's the hard part. I'd be happy to discuss more. You can get my email in my profile.


Indeed we can use "reverse engineer" or ML models to get more ideas. I wrote about using Deep Learning to predict sales here: https://towardsdatascience.com/predicting-amazon-sales-using...

We work with sellers in a slightly different way: We are more focused on best geography and time to sell a product. In essence we predict how much you will sell in future and in what locations. I will drop you an email and we can talk further.


Further information here: http://www.simonnouwens.com/hn/index.php/2019/03/31/init-com...

After reading that, I'm interested. Emailed you.

Also, to the person who asked about who gets bigger share of equity: as mentioned in the link above, it looks like you get 80%, the OP gets 20%.

Nevermind: It's OP 80%, you 20%.


Short version:

I'll buy 80% of your idea for $500.

In case first customer(s) will ever come - i'll give you another $1,500.

Not clear: if no customer(s) will ever come after X days - who owns the idea?


Thanks for your point. There are a lot of details which need to be discussed but depend on the idea, clients, product type, implementation etc. Ownership and exact targets being one of them.


This proposition's assumption is that there's something special about ideas. Reminds me of the kind of person that might make you sign an NDA before telling you a "cool idea I had last night." It's no secret that YC -- like basically all incubators -- invests in people, not ideas. Teams will sometimes fumble for years before they find product-market fit.

There are no shortcuts.


Great point. I give the author of this post props for trying this and it has been an entertaining proposition. But to me premise 2 is admitting there will be massive shortcuts taken here. There is now way one person could build a product that would scale as well as a product made by an entire team. You might be able to get it about 90% there, but the last 10% is the hardest IMHO.

In my experience this kind of rationale is what leads to MVPs being spun out quickly using hybrid tools which have a hard time scaling. Sure it kinda looks like the real deal, but the product will limit the growth potential of your company.


There are plenty of products/services built by a single person that only hired more people once they were able to afford it and needed it. This is especially common when access to VC funding is pretty much non-existent and you can't just hire a bunch of people.


I'd much rather be in the position of having too much demand for a badly build piece of software then an awesome team, VC funds and a beautiful Elixir architecture with no demand.

Reminds me of this post [1] that hit the top pages yesterday. It's actually the anti-example for my argument, but the way software runs in the real world. Apparently it's commercially more interesting to run cr*p, even if that gives rise to a significant probability of costing you $172k a second.

I think the first sell is special, the idea just leads you there.

[1] https://sweetness.hmmz.org/2013-10-22-how-to-lose-172222-a-s...


I posted a similar proposition https://webuild.tools (build the software for free and retain the client as the first customer) I have time/interest to build side projects and built many too. But nothing takes off as it is never backed a solid business need. And I am no where close to solving this problem.


Similar indeed, though I'd hope to bump into someone that is willing/able to sell it to their direct environment. Doing a free build/first customer deal seems too risky to me indeed (over-optimizing on what this single person needs). I suspect "premise 2" has to do with this.

I'm interested in hearing a bit more about your experience if you have some time. What kind of projects have you done so far? Nothing that ended up moving the needle a little? Even after further marketing/promotional efforts?


Thanks for asking. It's usually web apps built around some kind of networking needs. I built one where people could ask for recommendations from friends. Another one was a hybrid app where users can set a single status for themselves. Now I am working on an amazon reseller site that has curated products. I built another one where users can post their SaaS apps (kind of app store for web products). It usually dies within a few weeks because I am lost on how to promote/market these apps. And this goes on a loop. So I was looking for people with a proper business case. While I learn a lot building these apps, I figured it will be more useful if I can build it with some purpose.


can you drop your contact info in your profile so that we can contact you? We do amazon reselling, interested in learning more about the reseller site you are working on. Also have tools that we are looking to build ourselves (we will pay for), that other sellers like us are interested in paying to use as well.


Premise 1: I agree, many investors have more money than sense.

Premise 2: I completely agree; in fact I think that solo side projects are coded more efficiently than commercial software.

Premise 3: I disagree. I code most of my side projects, because I have too much free time. I just don't follow through on the documentation/uploading part. This may be because of market fit, or copyright worries, or because I like coding more than writing up. Nevertheless I do still add projects to Show HN, especially when trying to apply for jobs.

Premise 4: Yes, I agree, Hacker News is a wonderful community.

I'm not a marketer, so I can't provide your market validation/research. Rather, I'm a maker like you! But I have no shortage of ideas that I'll talk about for free. For example, my most recent script (27 March) was a rewrite of VideoSubFinder that runs in 5 minutes instead of 2 hours. It's all part of my Pingtype Chinese learning project, which still hasn't taken off, but I keep building on it because it teaches me so much better than textbooks.


I run SwiftMVP.com -- We once tried offering half-price if people give up the white label and credit us. Apparently, $5000 are not the issue.


That's a cool project! Mind sharing how you get your customers?


My idea is to build a digital giving economy. You get to keep 100% of everything given to you through the site. If successful, you can retire comfortably with little money while being held by the giving community and go forward in a life of service, if you so choose.

As the site produces no money, you can keep 100% of all revenue.


I’m currently pondering how strange it is that I would take either side of this deal.

I have half baked ideas I’d love someone to take and run with and me collect a bit of that.

And I’d love to hear profitable ideas in industries I’m not familiar with and put some code together.

Yet I don’t have an idea I’d want to build into a business myself. Weird.


That's a great point, and something I've pondered over the last 2 days (I got the same impression).

Any idea why? Perhaps the hidden expectation that a collaboration like this magically will eliminate all my/your own barriers?


I think the social proof aspect is a big part of it.


Here's the math: If OP can speed up the rate of hitting acquisition and/or increase valuation by >= 5 times, it's a good deal. Say if it would take you 20 years to do something, and this cuts it down to 4 years, it's a good deal.


This proposition probably needs further refinement, but I like it because it will explore an area where there's little historical data or real world examples.

I think that the first few dozens of "pitches" will give a much clearer sense of what kind of ideas you can attract, and also what's the friction in the interaction between the "producer" and the "idea person".

Keep going. And please, if you can, share more once you've been through this for a while. Very curious to see where this will go.


half the comments here think you're offering to do the mvp, the market research, and find the first customer, all for 2k+80%.

when i read it it looks like you're offering to do the mvp but you're buying the idea, market validation and first customer for 20%.

which is it?? the first option makes sense, but its not how i read it. if thats what you mean you should clarify.

if in fact you are just offering the mvp, you are terribly undervaluing the work involved in validating the idea. the 80-20 split is backwards.


This is a bad great idea!

With a little tweaking of the numbers, I think I would gladly accept a similar offer if it came from a trusted friend.


I like this idea; I had a company based on this premise (we took 20, owner took 80 and we did the dev and seed invest); I would like to go back to that now that I have a much larger network of investors and business development partners. I am looking for cofounding full stack devs to join me as I am now much more on the business side.


Care to explain? :) What kind of business did you have? Did it work out? And what's the problem in doing it again?


The problem was that programming comes before marketing & business. I mean there is an idea and a plan ofcourse and you try to validate that as much as you can, but basically, after that, the programming/development phase kicks in, which was what we did for our %. When the business person/inventor/cofounder(s) after that said; 'oh we tried to market but failed, ah well, shame' then you are stuck with 20% of nothing while you did the work already. Now that I have far more business and legal sense, I don't think there is much of an issue doing it again.


Anyone in the u.s. doing this? I'd be willing to give up 50% equity and no cash for what I think is an awesome idea.


> HackerNews has a decent number of people who know how the world works, and how a little glue would make it better.

Wait what


! I have a couple Ideas both a wedding subcontractor platform...and mindfullness reminder app.

As for the wedding platform , I even have the people who would be available to signup as sub-contractors.

Venues could signup we get a percentage for advertisement we handle all payment processing, hmu if you are interested working together.


Sounds like something that might have potential! (the subcontractor idea, the mindfulness reminder is something you can't really monetize and most likely exists already)

Any experience in the wedding subcontractor field? I'd love to discuss some idea's if you like (email in profile)!


I had this idea to build social network where people could share photos with friends.

Where I can pick up my $500?


Let's use ad's and stuff! It's going to be huuuuge!


Only pictures of people when drunk - we'll call it FacedLook.


Call it Sh*tFaced.


Let me propose a hypothetical? business arrangement where my startup selects and screens applicants and their ideas to you / your team. How would we arrange the split funding in this case with a similar spirit?


We are working on an exchange and wallet solution that provides an insurance feature similar to US FDIC.

Evermint Exchange https://evermint.com hakim@evermint.com


How do you 'split' a product if it's a SaaS?

Who pays/manages the platform?


Hi Simon, I sent you an email with the subject the same as the title of this thread. I am concerned that it will be filtered into your spam box, so kindly check for an email from me. Thanks!


I feel like these sort of mvp type ideas work great for software only, as soon as you involve a physical device how do you go about avoiding capital risk? I don't think you can!


What language(s) do you prefer using? How about databases? I’d be interested in starting a dialogue with you. My email is jwheeler726 at googles email service.


I sent you an email, hopefully we can talk. I find this intriguing and would like your opinion on whether or not my idea has legs. Thanks for posting.


Idea: A platform for general discussion that takes what's best about HN, Reddit and even 4chan/5ch etc. while eliminating most of their flaws.


We have a call center on the cloud , which we are planning to sell , if you are interested reach out to me harini at contactcentral dot io


Why are you using a different account than in the version [1]?

Edit: Now I understand. Version 1 was made by another user.


1. I like the alternative to the status quo for "starting a company". Even more so b/c you're addressing the unmet implicit desire to finish side projects.

2. Premise 1 is agreeable. P2 doesn't hold past the initial VC demo, let alone MVP stage. P3: probably approximately correct. P4: I would agree.

3. Skimming the comments here and seeing mixed/confused feedback, I assume those taking this more seriously are keeping silent.


Ok I’ve got an idea for you involving vending machines. Email me if you want to hear more.


How many projects are you looking to do? One at a time?


How do we contact you for a proposal?


hn at simonnouwens dot nl


Can you clarify how much equity you want. 80% sounds too high sorry but its not very clear.


Seems much confusion about this; 80% would be a weird deal so I assumed 20%.




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